Of The Hands Thoughts on voluntary poverty, peak oil, homesteading, farming, doing good work, reconnecting to the land, and muddling through a contracting economy

The How To Be Poor series of posts is one of the main focuses of mine for 2012, as outlined in my post A New Year’s Plan: Death, Poverty and the Household Economy. In these posts, I argue for the validity and necessity of voluntary poverty as a response to our uncertain future. I also argue for it is a moral imperative, in response to the destruction we’re imposing on our world. The full archive of How To Be Poor posts are linked below, in chronological order. New posts will be linked on this page as they are published.

Furthermore, while I highly recommend reading the three part introduction for a full, if somewhat long, accounting of my base thoughts on voluntary poverty, I would also recommend the later post in this series, Our Distorted View, as a shorter and in some ways more effective introduction. It talks of my idea of the difference between the sort of voluntary poverty I’m advocating for and the forced poverty that I think we may end up having to deal with in the future, for which I unfortunately have minimal suggestions. Still, I think that post helps clarify some of the views I lay out in the three part introduction.

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The Introduction

How To Be Poor: An Argument for Voluntary Poverty — Part One – January 26, 2012I make the case, in broad outlines, for what I think the future holds for us in terms of energy and resource usage. Based on these assumptions, I argue for voluntary poverty as an effective response to that future, and I also speak of the moral imperative as a secondary argument.

How To Be Poor: An Argument for Voluntary Poverty — Part Two – January 29, 2012In the second part of the introduction, I make a distinction between voluntary poverty and voluntary simplicity, noting why I choose to use the term “poverty” instead of “simplicity.” I argue that the idea that we can create a sustainable version of the middle class American lifestyle is a myth, and that we face a future that is going to necessitate a much more radical change of our ways of life.

How To Be Poor: An Argument for Voluntary Poverty — Part Three – February 2, 2012In the third part, I provide the broad outline of my plan for the series, in which I will be writing mostly about changing our frame of mind and how we interact with the world as the key pieces of transitioning to a life featuring far less energy- and resource-usage. I also give many of my own financial details in an effort to provide as much transparency and honesty as possible in terms of where I am personally in this process.